1870, Karl Marx, The Civil War in France

(at Marxists.org)
The First Address [1]

July 23, 1870 

[The Beginning of the Franco-Prussian

War] 

In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s

Association, of November 1864, we said: 

“If the emancipation of the working classes requires their

fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great
mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs,
playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical
wars the people’s blood and treasure?” 

We defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in

these words: 

“Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought

to govern the relations of private individuals, as the laws
paramount of the intercourse of nations.” 

No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped power by

exploiting the war of classes in France, and perpetuated it by
periodical wars abroad, should, from the first, have treated the
International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of the
plebiscite[A] he ordered a raid on the members of the
Administrative Committee of the International Working Men’s
Association throughout France, at Paris, Lyons, Rouen,
Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the International was
a secret society dabbling in a complot for his assassination, a
pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his own
judges. What was the real crime of the French branches of the
International? They told the French people publicly and
emphatically that voting the plebiscite was voting despotism at
home and war abroad. It has been, in fact, their work that in all
the great towns, in all the industrial centres of France, the
working class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite.
Unfortunately, the balance was turned by the heavy ignorance of
the rural districts. The stock exchanges, the cabinets, the ruling
classes, and the press of Europe celebrated the plebiscite as a
signal victory of the French emperor over the French working
class; and it was the signal for the assassination, not of an
individual, but of nations. 

The war plot of July [19] 1870[B] is but an amended edition of

the coup d’etat of December 1851. At first view, the thing seemed
so absurd that France would not believe in its real good earnest.
It rather believed the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk
as a mere stock-jobbing trick. When, on July 15, war was at last
officially announced to the Corps Legislatif, the whole
Opposition refused to vote the preliminary subsidies –
even Thiersbranded it as “detestable”; all the independent
journals of Paris condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the
provincial press joined in almost unanimously. 

Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again

set to work. In the Reveil of July 12, they published their
manifesto “to the Workmen of all Nations,” from which we
extract the following few passages: 

“Once more,” they say, “on the pretext of European

equilibrium, of national honor, the peace of the world is
menaced by political ambitions. French, German, Spanish
workmen! Let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation
against war! 
 [...] 

“War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty can, in the

eyes of workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In
answer to the warlike proclamations of those who exempt
themselves from the blood tax, and find in public misfortunes
a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who want peace,
labor, and liberty! 

[...] 

“Brothers in Germany! Our division would only result in the

complete triumph of the despotism on both sides of the
Rhine... 

“Workmen of all countries! Whatever may for the present

become of our common efforts, we, the members of the
International Working Men’s Association, who know of no
frontiers, we send you, as a pledge of indissoluble solidarity,
the good wishes and the salutations of the workmen of
France.” 

This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous

similar French addresses, of which we can here only quote the
declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in
the Marseillaise of July 22: 

“The war, is it just? No! The war, is it national? No! It is

merely dynastic. In the name of humanity, or democracy, and
the true interests of France, we adhere completely and
energetically to the protestation of the International against
the war.” 

These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the

French working people, as was soon shown by a curious
incident. The Band of the 10th of December, first organized
under the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, having been
masqueraded into blouses [i.e., to appear as common
workers] and let loose on the streets of Paris, there to perform
the contortions of war fever, the real workmen of the
Faubourgs [suburbs, workers’ districts] came forward with
public peace demonstrations so overwhelming that Pietri, the
Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to stop at once all further
street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people had given
sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war
enthusiasm. 

Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte’s war with

Prussia, the death-knell of the Second Empire has already
sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us
not forget that it is the governments and the ruling classes of
Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during 18 years the
ferocious farce of the Restored Empire. 

On the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put
Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled
Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was
Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte
for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and
annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of
Sadowa had been lost instead of being won, French battalions
would have overrun Germany as the allies of Prussia. After her
victory, did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free
Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While
carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she
super-added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real
despotism, and its mock democratism, its political shams and its
financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains. The
Bonapartist regime, which till then only flourished on one side
of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From
such a state of things, what else could result but war? 

If the German working class allows the present war to lose its
strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against
the French people, victory of defeat will prove alike disastrous.
All the miseries that befell Germany after her wars of
independence will revive with accumulated intensity. 
 The principles of the International are, however, too widely
spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class
to apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the
French workmen had re-echoed from Germany. A mass meeting
of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16, expressed its full
concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of
national antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions
with these words: 

“We are the enemies of all wars, but above all of dynastic
wars. ... With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo
a defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we call, at the
same time, upon the whole German working class to render
the recurrence of such an immense social misfortune
impossible by vindicating for the peoples themselves the
power to decide on peace and war, and making them masters
of their own destinies.” 

At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates, representing 50,000

Saxon workmen, adopted unanimously a resolution to this
effect: 

“In the name of German Democracy, and especially of the

workmen forming the Democratic Socialist Party, we declare
the present war to be exclusively dynastic.... We are happy to
grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen
of France.... Mindful of the watchword of the International
Working Men’s Association: Proletarians of all countries,
unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries
are our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies.” 

The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the

Paris manifesto: 

“We,” they say, “join with heart and hand your protestation....
Solemnly, we promise that neither the sound of the trumpets,
nor the roar of the cannon, neither victory nor defeat, shall
divert us from our common work for the union of the children
of toil of all countries.” 

Be it so! 
 In the background of this suicidal strike looms the dark figure
of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present
war should have been given at the moment when the Moscovite
government had just finished its strategic lines of railway and
was already massing troops in the direction of the Prut.
[C]
 Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of
defense against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at
once by allowing the Prussian government to call for, or accept
the help of, the Cossack. Let them remember that after their war
of independence against the first Napoleon, Germany lay for
generations prostrate at the feet of the tsar. 

The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the

French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced
that whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the
alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill
war. The very fact that while official France and Germany are
rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and
Germany send each other messages of peace and goodwill; this
great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista
of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with
its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society
is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because
its national ruler will be everywhere the same – Labour! The
pioneer of that new society is the International Working Men’s
Association. 

Chapter 2: [Prussian Occupation of France]

 A plebiscite is a direct vote by an electorate of a nation to decide a

[A]

question of national importance, such as governmental policy. Conducted

by Napoleon III in May 1870 the questions were so worded that it was
impossible to express disapproval of the policy of the Second Empire
without declaring opposition to all democratic reforms for the working
class. The sections of the First International in France argued that their
members should not participate in the vote. On the eve of the plebiscite
members of the Paris Federation were arrested on a charge of conspiring
against Napoleon III. This pretext was further used by the government to
launch a campaign of persecution of the members of the International
throughout France. At the trial of the Paris Federation members (June 22
to July 5, 1870), the charge of conspiracy was clearly exposed as without
any basis. Nevertheless a number of the International’s members were
sentenced to imprisonment based solely on their socialistic beliefs. The
working class of France responded to these political persecutions with
mass protests. 

[B]
 The date when Napoleon III declared war on Prussia. 

 The river Prut, rising in the southwestern Ukraine and flowing

[C]

southeast, forming part of the border between Roumania (within an

autonomous part of Austria-Hungary) and Russia (later to join the river
Danube). Length: 853 kilometers.